In which an overly analytical knitter uses too many words to describe what she's doing.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Whew!

I finished the sleeves for Rogue in a knitting frenzy over the weekend. I was very paranoid about running out of yarn despite PumpkinMama's assurance that I wouldn't. Thankfully, she was right! But it was close:

In this photo you see: the front/back/hood of Rogue blocking, what's left of my yarn, and Scout (for scale). According to my pre-yarn order calculations, I should have had 170 "extra" yards of yarn to play with. That's why I didn't bother to order and extra skein of yarn. However, that little ball of yarn is only 0.75 oz--less than 40 yards! Not much left and I still have to use some of that yarn for the seams.

The truly scary part is that I did a couple modifications that significantly reduced the amount of yarn that I needed. Had I knit the pattern exactly as written I would have definitely run out of yarn. Instead of reading about my relief, you would be reading about my panicked phone call to Chester Farms in which I begged for another skein from the same dye lot as the order that I placed in mid-December.

I'm pretty surprised that I cut it so close with the yarn. Usually, I never have problems using more than the required amount of yarn for a project. I doubt the yardage estimates on Rogue are off because so many people have knit the sweater. However, I won't try to speculate what happened this time because everything worked out in the end!

Sorry to hear about the yarn stress. Look on the bright side, the adrenaline rush you get as you're finishing a second sleeve, moment to moment wondering if you're going to run out of yarn, is good for your circulation. Or something.